In assessing the danger to American security from Axis aggression in 1940 and
early 1941, President Roosevelt and his advisers always considered Nazi Germany
the greatest menace. They believed that Fascist Italy held no threat at all, at
least to American interests in the Western Hemisphere. They viewed Japan as a
very real threat to American interests in the Pacific, but not one of the same
magnitude as that presented by Germany in the Atlantic. Events were to prove
that Japan had both the means and a more immediately deadly intent to challenge
the United States. Nevertheless, American leaders were probably correct in
focusing their attention on Germany and its unpredictable Fuehrer, and therefore
on the Atlantic aspects of the war, at least until after the Nazi-Soviet
conflict began in June 1941. Until then, German land and air forces available
for operations in the Atlantic area were much greater than those of Great
Britain and the United States combined. If Germany's Navy had been relatively as
large as its land and air forces, the story of World War II might well have been
very different.

Although the United States based its plans and preparations for hemisphere
defense on the assumption that the Nazis and their partners in aggression had
embarked on a calculated scheme of world conquest, a scheme that would
inevitably bring the New World under military attack, it is now known that
Germany in 1940 and 1941 had no specific plans for attacking any part of the
Western Hemisphere.1 Indeed,
the basic objective of German policy toward the United States until Pearl Harbor
was to keep it out of direct participation in the war. On the other hand, the
general attitude of the Hitler regime was at least as hostile toward the United
States as that of the Roosevelt administration and of the great majority of the
American people was toward Germany.2

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To say that Germany had no specific plans for attacking the United States or any other part of the New World is more or less beside the point in
appraising the measures taken at the time to meet the possibility of German military
action. When the Germans won their quick land victory over France and Great
Britain in June 1940, they had no specific plans for attacking anywhere else,
but they did have the means. They had a military machine overwhelmingly powerful
in land and air forces, backed by an immediate war industrial capacity far
greater than that of any other nation. These means were at the disposal of
leaders utterly devoid of a sense of international morality. Given this military
preponderance and type of leadership, it was inevitable that the German nation,
hindered rather than aided by its Italian partner, would strike out in new
directions after the fall of France. Whatever the professions of Hitler and
other Nazi leaders, the German military machine was not likely to stop until it
was defeated. This was the German menace.

Until the summer of 1940, Hitler and his principal advisers gave but scant
attention to the possibility of American intervention-direct or indirect n
Europe. The German leaders had taken the neutrality acts of 1935 and 1937 more
or less at their face value and had assumed that the United States would
maintain an isolationist position so long as Germany made no move that could be
interpreted as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine.3 Hitler expressed the opinion
in 1939 that the United States would never intervene in another general European
war because of the "unpleasant experiences" and financial loss it had suffered
in World War I. In July 1940 he reiterated this last point, observing that the
United States "lost" $10,000,000,000 by participating in the first world war and
"got back" only $1,400,000,000.4 Although the German military
attaché in
Washington transmitted reasonably accurate estimates of American military
preparations, his reports carried little weight among German military leaders.
They were convinced that the United States Army of 1939 was too small to take an
active part in a European war, that it would take the United States several
years to develop substantial military strength, and that even if the Army were
rapidly increased in numbers it would still lack experienced leadership and
therefore be no match for the Wehrmacht.5
In any event, Hitler expected to complete his European conquests before the
United States could possibly intervene.
6

[69]

Despite their generally contemptuous attitude toward the American military
potential, the Germans after war began in September 1939 tried to avoid military
incidents that might be interpreted by the United States as hostile acts. On
Hitler's repeated orders, the German Navy until the spring of 1941 carefully
respected the Atlantic neutrality zone patrolled by the United States Navy.7 The
Nazis did engage in manifold activities to stir up trouble for the United States
in Latin America, and within the country they went as far as they could to sow
dissension among the American people; but these activities seem to have had the
negative objective of weakening the United States and undermining the front of
hemisphere solidarity, rather than the positive aim of preparing the New World
for German conquest.

When the Nazis launched their attack on the West in the spring of 1940 they
acted on a carefully calculated operational plan that achieved a quick and
decisive victory far sooner than they themselves had anticipated, and therefore
they did not have ready any plan for operations thereafter. Hitler in May and
June 1940 seems to have hoped to end the war in the West as soon as possible, to
persuade both France and Great Britain to make peace on reasonable terms, and
then to consolidate his position as master of western Europe. In part, his plans
were shaped by the pressure President Roosevelt was bringing to bear on both
Italy and Germany to curb their aggressive actions. In a letter to Mussolini on
3 May, a week before the assault on France, Hitler remarked that he thought "the
undertone of threat ringing through all of Roosevelt's utterances is sufficient
grounds for us to be on our guard and bring the war to a close as quickly as
possible."
8 The President's Charlottesville address of 10
June made a great impression or. Hitler. Through a devious channel, he hastened
to assure the United States Government that his policy was "Europe for the
Europeans and America for the Americans," and he also disclaimed any desire to
destroy the British Empire. America's announced policy of aiding Britain and the
other nations fighting Germany and Italy brought a new conviction among German
leaders that the United States would eventually intervene in the war if it
lasted.9

The French request for an armistice on 17 June found the Germans unprepared
to give an immediate answer since they had not decided on either the temporary
or the long-range demands that they would impose on France. After consulting
with Mussolini (and rejecting his proposals), Hitler presented relatively
lenient armistice terms to the French on 21 June. He did

[70]

not ask for control of the French Fleet, nor did he require the French to
open their African territories to German occupation. To the Italians, Hitler
explained that he wanted to keep the French Fleet out of British hands. He also
felt that the presentation of harsher terms might have led to a withdrawal of
the new Pétain government to North Africa. Hitler's primary aim was to get the
French out of the war in order to widen the rift that had developed between the
French and British and thus to weaken Great Britain's ability further to resist.
The Germans expected the British people to see the hopelessness of their
military position, to overthrow the Churchill ministry, and to make peace on
terms that would leave the British Empire virtually intact but impotent to
interfere with Germany's mastery of western Europe.10

Before the downfall of France, Hitler had not planned an invasion of Great
Britain.11 By
the end of June, the Germans began to realize that the British were determined
to fight on. "Britain probably still needs one more demonstration of our
military might before she gives in and leaves us a free hand in the East,"
General Franz Halder, the Chief of the German Army's General Staff, recorded in
his journal on 30 June 1940. On 16 July Hitler ordered the immediate preparation
of detailed invasion plans. The decision to fight it out with England reoriented
the whole German outlook toward the Atlantic front. To beat Britain to its knees
would require a German-controlled front extending from the North Cape to
Morocco. The Germans also planned to seize Iceland, occupy strategic positions
in West Africa, and claim the French Congo and Belgian Congo as war booty.
12

Before the decision to invade Great Britain had been made, the German Naval
Staff prepared a general program for base expansion and ship construction
designed to make Germany a pre-eminent naval power in the Atlantic. In plans
prepared for conferences with Hitler on 20 June and 11 July, the Navy advocated
annexation of Iceland and its exploitation as a naval and air base; development
of bases either in the Azores or in both the Canary and Cape Verde Islands;
creation of a large united German colonial

[71]

empire in central Africa; and construction of an Atlantic battleship force
that would neutralize British and American naval power.13 In his discussion with
Hitler on 11 July, the commander in chief of the German Navy, Admiral Erich
Raeder, pointed out the particular importance of Dakar as a base for conducting
warfare in the Atlantic. Hider at this time seems to have gone no further toward
approving these proposals than expressing a desire "to acquire one of the Canary
Islands from Spain in exchange for French Morocco."14 Until
he decided to invade England, Hitler himself seems to have taken comparatively
little interest in plans for expansion into Africa or extension of German naval
power in the Atlantic. His brief interest in Iceland expired when he was told by
his advisers that it would be impossible to construct airfields there. As
already noted, Great Britain had begun a military occupation of Iceland on 10
May, and by the end of July relatively strong British and Canadian contingents
had been brought in to defend the island-a factor that undoubtedly also
contributed to the German decision not to attempt its invasion.15

The other measures advocated by the German Navy became more attractive to the
Nazi Fuehrer, primarily as adjuncts to a showdown fight with Great Britain.
Fortunately for the United States, Hitler seems to have had very little
realization of the strategic significance of German bases in French West Africa
and on the eastern Atlantic islands for their own sake. Germany's military
attaché in the United States during the prewar period, General Friedrich von
Boetticher, stated after the war that, following the fall of France in 1940, he
had stressed in his reports the strategic significance of controlling the South
Atlantic-African-Red Sea belt. But, he added, Hitler and his intimate advisers

. . . had no clear idea of the geographical requisites for
a world war. The significance of the British Empire's life-line through the
Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, and the importance of the Middle East were
not grasped at the time .... There was also no clear idea of the strategic
significance of the narrowing of the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and Africa,
and of the land and air routes across central Africa from the Atlantic Ocean
to the Red Sea.16

On 10 July the German Air Force began its assault in force on Britain. After
16 July the German Army and Navy staffs worked feverishly on invasion plans,
for they realized that an invasion must either take place in the early fall
or be postponed at least until the following spring. At the same

[72]

time, the Germans attempted to secure a revision of the armistice
arrangements with France in order to obtain French consent to the establishment
of German bases in southern France and along the Mediterranean and Atlantic
coasts of French North Africa.17 From their beginning Hitler appears to have
viewed the preparations for a full-scale Atlantic war with misgivings. On 13
July General Halder recorded in his journal:

...the Fuehrer is greatly puzzled by Britain's persisting
unwillingness to make peace. He sees the answer (as we do) in Britain's hope
on Russia, 'and therefore counts on having to compel her by main force to
agree to peace. Actually that is much against his grain. The reason is that
a military defeat of Britain will bring about the disintegration of the British
Empire. This would not be of any benefit to Germany. German blood would be
shed to accomplish something that would benefit only Japan, the United States
and others.

Very quickly Hitler came to the conclusion that Britain's reason for
continuing the war was its hope for aid from the United States and the Soviet
Union. He discounted the ability of the United States to render much aid to
Britain, and he assumed that the British did also; the Russians were another
matter. As of 21 July, the Nazi Fuehrer felt that Britain's obduracy could best
be overcome by confronting the British with a political front embracing Spain,
Italy, and the Soviet Union.18

Ten days later, after the German Army and Navy had presented their blueprints
for an invasion of England, Hitler arrived at a very different decision. While
the Army and Navy told him that they could undertake an invasion in September,
provided that Britain had been sufficiently softened up by air bombardment, that
the Germans had gained air superiority over the invasion area, that the weather
was extremely favorable, etc., etc., it was rather clear that neither the German
land nor sea forces had any stomach for the invasion project. Neither did
Hitler. The alternative to invasion was a long, drawn-out effort to reduce the
British Isles by air and submarine action, which would take at least a year or
two. Again observing that Britain's hope for survival lay in the prospect of aid
from the Soviet Union and the United States, Hitler came to the conclusion that
by beating the Russians first he could knock out both props that sustained the
British: by eliminating the Soviet Union as a Far Eastern power, he would
enormously strengthen the power of Japan, and by thus increasing the peril to
American interests in the Pacific, would stay any American intervention in the
European war. Furthermore, the Soviet Union, initially the partner-in-conquest
of Nazi Germany, had shown increasing signs of restiveness and distrust since
the fall

[73]

of France. "With Russia smashed," Hitler is reported to have said, "Britain's
last hope would be shattered." Therefore, the Fuehrer concluded: "Russia's
destruction must . . . be made a part of this struggle. Spring 41.19

Despite Hitler's stated decision on 31 July 1940 to turn against the Soviet
Union, preparations for the English invasion went on during August and early
September, the period of the "Battle of Britain." But the German Air Force did
not knock out British airpower, the first and most important prerequisite for a
successful invasion. In mid-September Hitler virtually decided
on the indefinite postponement of the invasion of Great Britain, though at the
same time he ordered a continuance of invasion preparations and kept these in
motion until mid-October.20 The
air bombardment of Britain was also maintained, but on a diminished scale after
October .21

Hitler's decision to postpone the invasion of Great Britain coincided with
the negotiation by the European Axis partners of a tripartite alliance with
Japan, signed on 27 September 1940. This pact provided that a military attack on
any member of the new Axis triumvirate by any nation not then engaged in either
the European or the Sino-Japanese war would invoke the political, economic, and
military assistance of the other two. It was aimed primarily at the United
States, secondarily at the Soviet Union. By it, Germany and Italy gave a much
freer hand to Japanese aggression in the western Pacific, at the same time
securing at least a paper promise that Japan would attack the United States if
the United States attacked German or Italian forces in the eastern Atlantic
theater. By the pact the Nazis hoped to keep the United States out of the
European war and away from all-out preparations for war until Germany had
completed its conquest of Europe.22

The signing of the Tripartite Pact also coincided with the expansion of the
war in both the European and the Asiatic theaters. In mid-September the Italian
Army launched its North African drive against British forces in

[74]

Egypt, and in late October Mussolini began the invasion of Greece. The
Japanese made their first overt move outside of China in these same months by
occupying northern French Indochina, ostensibly as a means of prosecuting the
Sino-Japanese War, actually to prepare Indochina as a base of operations against
Singapore and the Dutch East Indies.23

In the Japanese plans and actions of 1940 and early 1941 there was less
immediate but more ominous future danger to the United States than in the
German. Germany's victory in Europe had once more aroused the militant Japanese
advocates of expansion. Capitalizing on the distress of the Western Allies, the
Japanese in July forced Britain to close the Burma Road and France to yield
concessions in Indochina. In a series of fateful cabinet meetings extending from
July to early October, Japan forged the decision to attack southward as soon as
circumstances permitted. This decision envisioned the establishment of Japanese
control in China and the colonial expansion of Japan to include Indochina,
Thailand, Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch and British East Indies. The Japanese
hoped to conclude a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union in order to guard
their northern flank during the southward advance. They also wanted to negotiate
a nonaggression treaty with the United States, in which the Americans would
agree to stop encouraging Chinese Nationalist resistance to Japan, acquiesce in
Japan's establishment of a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" with
dimensions approximating those specified above, and in return accept a Japanese
guarantee of Philippine independence. If, instead, the United States insisted on
resisting Japan's expansion, then the Philippines and Guam were to be added to
Japan's Far East empire.
24

Ambassador Grew reported from Tokyo in December 1940 that in his opinion
Japan had become "openly and unashamedly one of the predatory nations" and that
only "insuperable obstacles" could stop the Japanese from pushing their
southward advance.25 The Japanese, recognizing the slight chance of obtaining
American acquiescence in their expansion, began in January 1941 to hatch the
plan for a surprise and crippling attack on the United States Fleet at its Pearl
Harbor base. Rumors of this plan reached the Department of State before the end
of January but were dismissed without

[75]

much ado.26 The
United States also knew that the Japanese were gathering detailed information
about American defense preparations, particularly those along the Pacific coast
and in the Pacific outposts of Alaska, Hawaii, and Panama. The Navy was kept
busy investigating rumors that Japanese submarines were reconnoitering in
Pacific waters, especially in the vicinity of Hawaii.27 The Japanese were indeed beginning their preparations for war against the United
States; but because these preparations would require many months to complete,
and because the Japanese preferred to carry out their expansion if possible
without a war with the Americans, they authorized their new ambassador to the
United States to negotiate an agreement toward this end. Admiral Kichisaburo
Nomura, after a preliminary talk with President Roosevelt on 14 February, began
his discussions with Secretary Hull in March.28 The arrival of a new ambassador
in Washington eased the tension over the Far Eastern situation that had
characterized the preceding few months, though sober analysis should have
indicated the small chance of a mutually satisfactory American Japanese
agreement.

After Japan's adherence to the Axis in September 1940, Hitler concentrated
on plans for a limited offensive in the Mediterranean area that could be carried
out before his projected attack on Soviet Russia. At the end of July German
Army leaders had agreed that a decisive blow to British power in the Mediterranean,
by the capture of Gibraltar and Suez, was the best immediate alternative to
an invasion of Great Britain. An attack on Gibraltar seemed the most feasible
initial step, if Spanish collaboration could be secured. Spain was already bound
to Germany by a treaty of friendship and had shown its kinship with the Axis
partners by seizing the international zone of Tangier in June 1940. German inquiries
in Spain in late July led to a Spanish overture, transmitted through the German
ambassador, proposing entry into the war on the side of Germany and Italy. Spain
would attack Gibraltar, in return for extensive German military and economic
assistance, and also for a German guarantee that in the peace settlement Spain
would acquire Gibraltar, French Morocco, Oran, and an expansion of Spain's central
African possessions. General Francisco Franco also made known his terms to

[76]

Mussolini, who gave them a vague blessing. During August Hitler and his
military advisers tentatively approved a plan for a Spanish attack on Gibraltar,
with large but camouflaged German air and artillery support.29 Spain made these
overtures, it may be noted, at a moment when the early defeat of Great Britain
seemed assured. Later, when Britain's downfall appeared less likely, Spanish
ardor for entering the war cooled, while at the same time German enthusiasm for
the Gibraltar operation mounted.

During the next two months the German plan for an attack on Gibraltar
broadened into a project for an operation that, if it had been carried out
successfully, would have naturally led to the establishment of German control in
northern and western Africa and the adjacent Atlantic islands, and ultimately to
the reconstruction of a German colonial empire in central Africa. During the
unsuccessful British-Free French attack on Dakar on 23-25 September, the Pétain
government retaliated by bombing Gibraltar. These incidents further embittered
Anglo-French relations and opened to Hitler the prospect of pursuing the
Gibraltar-Africa project with Vichy French as well as with Spanish
collaboration.

Hitler himself was particularly anxious to establish German forces in the
Cape Verde and Azores Islands. The former would cover the establishment of a
German naval base at Dakar, and the Azores would become a base for future air
operations against the United States, if it became more directly involved in the
war. Fortunately for the United States, neither the German Navy nor the Air
Force believed at this time that it had the means to capture and hold positions
in the Azores.30 Besides
their quest for bases and colonies, the Germans wanted to gain military control
of North Africa in order to prevent the execution of any current or future
British or American plans for invading this area and using it as a base of
operations against the European continent.31

[77]

Germany had plenty of military means to carry out the projected Gibraltar-Africa
operation and probably could have done so in the fall and winter of 1940-41
without unduly interfering with the projected Soviet invasion scheduled for
1941. The real check came when Hitler tried to reconcile the conflicting interests
and claims of Italy, France, and Spain. Not having asked for control over French
African possessions at the time of the armistice, Hitler now had the difficult
task of persuading the French to "cooperate" by allowing the Germans
access to key positions in French Africa and also persuading them to permit
transfer of certain French territories to Italy and Spain. If Hitler pressed
the French too severely, he believed that their African leaders might switch
to the British camp. On the other hand, to satisfy both Italian and Spanish
minimum pretensions would have absorbed most of French Africa, leaving nothing
for Germany itself. Besides, the Gibraltar-Africa scheme could not be carried
out except collaboratively with Italy and Spain, and from the military point
of view both nations were dangerous liabilities. By early October, it appeared
that a "reconciliation of conflicting French, Italian and Spanish interests
in Africa {was} possible only by a gigantic fraud."
32

Hitler's much-publicized meetings with French, Spanish, and Italian leaders
during October appear to have been a personal attempt to lay a groundwork for
this "fraud." Nevertheless, in the end this undertaking proved too
much for even Hitler's mastery of the art.33 What Hitler apparently hoped to do was to satisfy everyone after
Britain's defeat at the expense of Britain's African empire. He conferred with
Mussolini on 4 October, and thereafter he talked with German Army and Navy commanders
about military plans for Gibraltar and Africa. On 22 October, he discussed prospects
for French collaboration with the Vichy vice premier, Pierre Laval. On the following
day, Hitler met General Franco at the Spanish border. During their conversation
Franco gave an oral pledge that Spain would join the Axis and enter the war
at an undetermined future date-provided Germany promised approximately the same
considerations that Spain had demanded in August.34 On 24 October, Hitler talked with Marshal Pétain. The marshal agreed
to issue an official announcement stating that France had an identical interest
with Germany in seeing the defeat of England, and that the French

[78]

Government would "support, within the limits of its ability, the measures
which the Axis Powers may take to this end."
35 Actually, Hitler's conferences had failed to
produce an explicit agreement on the terms of collaboration or on the subsequent
division of the spoils, and Spain had not really committed itself to enter the
war in the near future. Nevertheless, on 4 November the Fuehrer instructed his
commanders to go ahead with detailed planning for the Gibraltar operation.36

Operation FELIX, as the Gibraltar project was christened, contemplated
a German entry from occupied France into Spain about 10 January 1941. Simultaneously,
German planes from France would attack British shipping at Gibraltar in order
to drive British naval support away from the fortress; they would then land
at newly prepared Spanish airfields to provide air support for the attack. An
artillery barrage-primarily by German guns secretly emplaced in advance-would
begin at the same time. About three weeks later (on or after 1 February), German
ground forces would arrive before the Rock to spearhead the attack. The Gibraltar
assault force would be followed through Spain by two German divisions-one armored
and one motorized-that would cross the strait into Morocco to seize control
of its Atlantic littoral. Three more German divisions were to cross Spain to
the Portuguese frontier, where they would be in position to counterattack a
British landing in Portugal. Spain, with the aid of German guns, would reinforce
the Canaries to guard them against an anticipated British attack. After Gibraltar's
capture, the Germans planned to garrison it themselves and also to maintain
German artillery on both sides of the strait to insure that the western exit
of the Mediterranean remained closed to the British. Only after Britain's defeat
would Gibraltar be turned over to the Spaniards. Plans and the necessary reconnaissance
for subsequent operations in northwestern Africa and against the Atlantic islands
had not been completed when FELIX was presented to Hitler for his approval
on 5 December. By then, the German Army, Navy, and Air Force had reported to
Hitler that their plans for FELIX were complete, and the German High
Command on 2 December informed its staff that General Franco had agreed that
operations should be launched at the beginning of February.
37

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At this point, the Germans demanded that Franco give his express approval to
the commencement of operations on or about 10 January 1941. The Spanish dictator
on 7 December refused to do so, or to agree to Spanish entry into the war at
any early date in the future.
38 Since the Germans had throughout considered Spanish collaboration
an essential to the execution of their project, Hitler felt he had no alternative
but to postpone FELIX and turn German military power in other directions.
He made half-hearted attempts in January to reopen the question with Spain,
but when his military advisers informed him that it would take two months to
remount the Gibraltar project and that the units involved would therefore be
unable to complete their task in time to participate in the attack on the Soviet
Union then scheduled for May 1941, the Nazi Fuehrer reluctantly abandoned Operation
FELIX. He had to content himself with expressing the conviction "that
the situation in Europe can no longer develop unfavorably for Germany even if
we should lose the whole of North Africa."
39

The execution of the Gibraltar-Africa project of 1940 would have posed a very
serious threat to the security of the United States and the rest of the Western
Hemisphere. While the British had expressed optimism about their chances of
defending Gibraltar successfully,40 the Germans had been at least equally
confident that they could capture it with relative ease and that thereafter
they could keep the western Mediterranean closed and could control northwestern
Africa. If the Gibraltar plan had succeeded, Britain's position would have been
seriously weakened, morally as well as materially. The entry of German military
forces into Morocco would have given Germany a hold over Vichy France that it
had hitherto lacked and would have eliminated the constant threat that French
North African leaders might throw in their lot with Great Britain should the
Germans push the Vichy Government too far. Spain's refusal to carry out its
tentative promises of collaboration had the effect of definitely turning German
military power eastward, first into the eastern Mediterranean and then against
the Russians. This eastward shift in the surge of German military might was of
incalculable advantage to the military preparations of the United States in
1941, and it left the door open for the Anglo-American North African offensive
in 1942.

German control of French North and West Africa would have had a profound
influence on the Latin American nations and would have made it

[80]

necessary for the United States greatly to accelerate its plans and measures
for defense in the Latin American area. No evidence had been uncovered that
Hitler or his military advisers developed their Gibraltar-Africa project to the
point of planning any transoceanic attack on the Brazilian bulge, though to
American military observers that seemed the logical sequel to a German thrust
toward the South Atlantic. When a similar German drive through Spain seemed
imminent in the spring of 1941, President Roosevelt and his military and
civilian advisers considered that it would be a very grave threat to American
security. The records of the preceding autumn do not reflect :a similar concern,
presumably because the President and his advisers never obtained a real inkling
of the concrete nature and precise scope of the German plans and preparation of
1940.
41

Thus the two specific German moves planned after the land victory in June
1940 that appeared to threaten the United States and the rest of the Western
Hemisphere immediately-the invasion of Great Britain and the Gibraltar-Africa
project-failed to materialize. A third and continuing threat-German air and
submarine action against Britain and British shipping lanes-was to have a good
deal more to do with the gradual involvement of the United States in the
Atlantic war from the fall of 1940 onward. The major menace-German military
might at loose ends under irresponsible and amoral leadership-was first stalled
and then slowly diverted toward secret preparations for the invasion of the
Soviet Union. The Japanese rather than the German decisions of 1940 were to
bring the United States into the war full-scale at the end of 1941, though Japan
acted then in response to the opportunity created by Hitler's European
aggressions.